Waiting for Guffman

Synopsis

There's a good reason some talent remains undiscovered.

Corky St. Clair is a director, actor and dancer in Blaine, Missouri. When it comes time to celebrate Blaine's 150th anniversary, Corky resolves to bring down the house in Broadway style in this hilarious mockumentary from the people who brought you "This is Spinal Tap!"

The best spoof films and 'mockumentaries' are those that show a genuine affection for the subject matter they're lampooning.

That's one of the many reasons why Friedberg and Seltzer's films fail so hard - they don't really have any affection for what they are mocking. When they're mostly mocking complete shit in the first place, that's hardly surprising and why most of their films are doomed from the beginning. It's the same mistake made by most such films these days.

But the thing that I've really enjoyed most of all about Best In Show and now Waiting For Guffman is that Christopher Guest clearly has some admiration for what is…

An amazing detail I never noticed before: Before the "Nothing Ever Happens On Mars" number, Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard's married couple are backstage, her painstakingly fixing his hair for him as he fusses over the details, after which he tells her "now you can fix yours", graciously allowing her the few seconds left before they're due on stage to take care of her own appearance.

Christopher Guest’s Waiting for Guffman is an energetic documentary-style black comedy which with its simple characters who are naively dreaming about fame, success and ecstasy and its delicate yet sometimes painfully bitter and absurd sense of humor possesses enough power and charm to spellbind the viewers for almost 90 minutes.

It may look like a simple, ordinary and forgettable movie: its characters are not human beings struggling with existential dilemmas, they are not looking for answers of unanswerable questions, they are not superheros who try to save the world from evil and they are not going to change the world, they are some ordinary men and women who only want to show the…

I've officially seen the movie too many times to laugh anymore, but I watched it again to show it to my husband (who now can't stop doing the Corky dance around the house). I now identify with the town councilman who can't get the songs out of his head XD

While watching this, I was reminded of American Movie. Obviously that one is a real documentary, but both feature odd men who are incredibly passionate about what they do, yet lack the talent and funding to be successful. This film is funny from start to finish, all the way into the closing credits. I wasn't laughing as much as I did with Best in Show, perhaps because the characters, aside from Guest's Corky, aren't as memorable, but there are plenty of laughs to be had within the short runtime. I've enjoyed the deadpan humor of all three Guest films I've seen (including Spinal Tap), and as a Missourian I always enjoy seeing movies set in my home state. Comedies in general aren't my favorite films, nor are documentaries, but oddly enough the mockumentary subgenre is one that has a high success rate for me, so I'm looking forward to seeing more Guest films.

It’s 2 in the morning, and while I just watched Charlie Brooker’s bleak and disturbing Bandersnatch Black Mirror film, I’m thinking about Waiting for Guffman. Why, do you ask?

This film was an absolute joy to watch. Oftentimes films that don’t have many “stakes” in the plot are branded as boring and uneventful. But what I love about these very simple stakes is that they mean the world to these characters, whom I fell in love with throughout the film, as the actors gave charming, and believable performances.

I think the key to this whole film is understanding the idea of community, and effort. Yes, films have tackled the idea of this time and time again. But what Waiting for…